All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95), published by The Lockman Foundation

If you’re a worshiper of the Lord Jesus, then you know that you’ve had a supernatural, miraculous change wrought in your heart. Your life isn’t what it once was, and now you know your Creator. Yet, so often we lose sight of the stark contrast between who we once were, who we currently are, and what God has promised we yet will be. We also tend to drift away from the fundamental truths of what will keep us on the path to heaven. Thankfully, we have plenty of reminders in Scripture of the natural progression of the Christian life, and of the truths that should occupy our focus every day.

One of the best reminders of these things is found in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, near the end of the first chapter. Right after he’s given a grand overview of the major characteristics of the Lord Jesus in His infinite divinity and universal preeminence, he then tells how His reconciliation of all things to the Father has personally impacted the Colossian saints and faithful brethren, and how it ought to continue to do so until the end of their lives. Thus, he brings God’s cosmic reconciliation of the universe to harmony and order in His Son to bear on the Colossians’ personal reconciliation to, and perfection for, God. He then ends by reminding them of the truth that God will alone use to maintain their holiness and faith, so they’ll eventually reach the glory that’s been promised them in the gospel. At the end of this reminder and warning, he brings to their attention the universal scope and personal power of the gospel itself, in his own preaching of it.

So, I want to show you this short section of Scripture which reminds you as a believer in Jesus of who you were, who you are, who you ultimately will be, and what will bring about that change throughout the rest of your life. There are three truths Paul teaches us in this section:

  1. We Were Estranged in Evil (v. 21)
  2. We Were Presented to God in Holiness (v. 22)
  3. We Will Persevere as Established in Faith (v. 23)

Here’s how Paul explains these truths to the Colossians:

“And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind . . . in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach – if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.”

  • Colossians 1:21-23

We Were Estranged in Evil

Paul’s first reminder to the Colossians is a vivid picture of their deplorable condition as unbelievers. The horrible state that all believers once experienced shows us the amazing and supernatural work that God has done in our hearts and minds to transform us. It also shows us that we deserve the exact opposite of what he’s done for us. In fact, this description shows us that there’s no possibility that we had any ability to decide to believe in Jesus, and worship God. The formal theological teaching this first verse proves to us is what’s known as “total depravity”. As unbelievers, in our natural state, every aspect of our essential being was corrupted by sin, which explains this disheartening description of who we once were.

There are three aspects of this estrangement that Paul gives us. First, we were “alienated”, which is the word from which I take “estrangement”. From what and whom were we alienated? Well, Paul earlier summed up the Colossians’ conversion by telling them that God “transferred us from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (v. 13), so we could say that the thing from which we were alienated was God’s kingdom, or manifest rule over our behavior. Basically, we were alienated from God’s heavenly realm. But more pertinently, we were alienated from a person, and that person was God. This means that we didn’t know Him as our Father, nor friend, although we still knew about Him.

The second part of this condition gives us the underlying reason why we were alienated from God. It was because we were hostile in our minds. To whom were we hostile? Toward the One from whom we were alienated, of course. In other words, our thinking and our affections opposed all that God is, in His holiness, goodness, justice, and love. As Paul writes in Romans 8:7, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile toward God” and cannot submit to Him. Moses articulates this mental state in Genesis 6:5 as “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Contrary to popular belief, people in their natural, unbelieving, condition, cannot think anything that pleases God, since all their thoughts come from sinful motives and desires.

Finally, this inward hostility toward God manifested itself in our outward evil behavior, since Paul finishes this clause by saying that we were literally “in evil deeds”. Therefore, not only were we cut off from God’s friendship, and opposed to Him, but we also openly lived in evil ways, as we willingly chose evil lifestyles. This is simply the miserable and wretched condition of all people without faith in the Lord Jesus. But thanks be to God that this is our former state!

We are Presented to God in Holiness

Next, Paul sums up the good news of how our alienation, heartfelt hostility, and evil lifestyles all changed through God’s great and glorious work. He now applies the universal reconciliation of everything that he described Jesus accomplishing through the blood of His cross (v. 20) to our personal lives, and speaks of the blessed results of that reconciliation. In this description, he first presents the instrument of Jesus’s reconciliation, and then the ends of this reconciliation.

The instrument Jesus used to reconcile us to the Father was His “fleshly body,” and the end was our presentation to God as “holy”. The first thing to understand is how this reconciliation was accomplished through Jesus’s body. At this point, it’s important to note that Paul explicitly uses the term for “flesh” when he writes of Jesus’s “fleshly body” (v. 22). In this context, he’s clearly not using “fleshly” in the sense of “sinful,” but as merely earthly and physical. He wants to emphasize that Jesus was fully human, and died while existing in a truly physical, flesh and blood, body. He did this to counter any false teaching that might have crept into the Colossians’ thinking about Jesus’s human nature. Some were saying that He was something sub-human, or not human at all. However, Paul makes clear that our reconciliation to the Father hinges on Jesus suffering and dying in a truly human body. Why is this essential? Because Jesus had to experience a fully human life, and also suffer exactly what we would suffer if we were punished by God. As the author of Hebrews says, “He had to made like His brethren in all things” (Heb. 2:17). Thus, Paul writes that Jesus reconciled us in His fleshly body, and through His death. The term “in” points to our unity with Jesus in His suffering on the cross, in that He experienced this agony in our place, as if we were suffering there with Him. In so doing, He paid the full penalty for all our sins against God, and satisfied His wrath and justice due to us.

Next, Paul details the purpose of our reconciliation to the Father in three ways. First, Jesus’s purpose in reconciling us to Him was to present us “before Him”. This speaks of entering God’s very presence, which is impossible for sinful people to do. However, since God’s wrath has been removed from us, and our guilt and sinfulness has been forgiven and washed away, eventually we’ll be able to experience and enjoy the full presence of God because of the condition that Jesus secured for us. This condition is part of this purpose’s threefold description.

Paul says that we can stand in God’s presence because we’ll be “holy and blameless and beyond reproach”. These are basically three terms to refer to the same thing, but with different nuances. Jesus reconciled us to first make us “holy,” or “separated”. This means that God will eventually separate us completely from sin, and make us pure in mind and body. The second characteristic results from our holiness, which is to be “blameless”. This means that no one will be able to blame us for any sin whatsoever, since God will be the One judging us based on our oneness with Jesus. Finally, because of our blamelessness, we’ll eventually be “beyond reproach,” so that no one will be able to speak badly of us, since we’ll have no record of sin or wrongdoing available for anyone to know. This is the blessed condition that all believers will enjoy on judgement day, and for eternity, because of our reconciliation to the Father. And we have begun to enjoy this blessedness now, since we are always in the presence of the Father through our Savior.

Although this perfected state is guaranteed through our reconciliation to God in Jesus’s body, yet it’s also conditioned on our continued faith in the gospel, which is the most important and powerful message in the whole world.

We Will Persevere as Established in Faith

Paul has just dealt with two realities of our eternal salvation that have to do with two different timeframes. In the past, we have been reconciled to God through Jesus; in the future, we will be presented to Him in perfect holiness. However, now Paul describes our present condition, which must be maintained if we are to be presented by Jesus to the Father in holiness. We must persevere in our establishment in the faith.

Paul writes, “if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel” (v. 23). He first puts it in the positive, and then in the negative form. In his positive explanation of our perseverance, he provides us with the means by which we will “continue”. He says that we must be firmly established and steadfast. What does this mean? To begin, this establishment is in “the faith”. And this faith is nothing less than the “gospel that you have heard”. Paul may have in mind also the implications of the gospel, but at its heart, the faith is the good news of our Lord and Savior Jesus Messiah. We ought to clearly, powerfully, and passionately understand what this gospel is. Just to remind you, it consists of the life, substitutionary death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, and His promise of God’s forgiveness for all who put their trust in Him. This gospel must be the grounds of our lives, our hope, and our thinking. As those who believe that we are one with Jesus, and blessed with Him, we derive all of our fundamental beliefs, affections, and hopes from this faith. But our confidence in these truths need to be steadfast. Steadfast against what? Against all the temptations and contradictions of the world, which entice us to stop believing the truth of who we are in Christ, and to pursue things of a temporal and earthly nature. The innumerable temptations, distractions, and deceptions that confront our minds and hearts on a daily basis require that we daily and constantly remind ourselves of why the gospel is good news for us, and the foundation of our hope which we look forward to.

If our thinking and aspirations remain established in the message of Jesus, and we continue to believe and apply it to our lives, then we can be sure that we won’t be ”moved away from the hope of the gospel”. Bear in mind that Paul is describing this condition of continuance in the faith because there’s the distinct possibility of being moved away from the hope of the gospel for those who profess to believe the gospel. Only those who have truly put all their hope for life and eternity in Jesus’s work and promises will remain grounded by hope in the gospel. So make sure that your hope is in nothing less than Jesus’s blood and righteousness!

In his conclusion to this passage, Paul reminds the Colossians that the gospel they’ve heard and believed is a universal and personal message to Paul. While the gospel is good news for us, we should also remember that it’s the good news for the entire world, and is God’s means of redeeming people from all creation. That’s why Paul describes it as the message that “was proclaimed in all creation under heaven”. Now, it’s obvious that, in that time of the 1st century, the gospel hadn’t yet been preached in the whole world, yet Paul can use hyperbole in declaring that it had been preached to most of the world, since it had spread across the Roman Empire, and beyond, to reach nearly every major group of people on earth. And we currently have no way of knowing where it had spread by the time Paul wrote in the mid-1st century.

And finally, Paul ends with a personal note. He reminds the Colossians, as an official spokesman and apostle of Jesus, that he was “made a minister” of the gospel. The Greek word that’s translated “minister” simply means a “servant”, and was used in Acts 6 to refer to a group of men who were called to distribute food to widows. But in the sense Paul’s using it here, instead of serving physical food, he’s describing himself as the server of the spiritual food of the gospel. Thus, he’s picturing himself as a lowly steward and distributor of someone else’s bounty and wealth.

The question is, why does Paul bring himself up as a servant of the gospel in this section about the Colossians’ reconciliation to God? Because they’d never met him before. In this letter, he wanted to introduce himself to them, presumably as preparation for eventually visiting them. Hence, he takes the opportunity of writing about the gospel and its reconciling power to start describing himself to them. And this description and autobiography is what he’ll continue in the next part of the letter. But we’ll end here for now, and think about a few applications of what we’ve studied here.

You’ve Been Reconciled to Proclaim the Gospel

There are two challenging applications from this passage that we ought to take from it. The first one is that we’ve been saved for the purpose of being “holy, blameless, and beyond reproach”. Although the specific presentation to God that Paul is speaking of awaits the day of judgement, yet it’s still true that we have been made holy, and should be blameless and beyond reproach. This doesn’t mean living sinlessly, but reflecting the character of Jesus in a small degree. As friends of God, we ought to think and act with pure motives, desires, and affections. This will result in a lifestyle that is unable to criticized from the outside, since we ought to be living consistently righteous, upright, and godly lives. And since we possess the Spirit living within us, this godliness ought to be gradually increasing in us.

The second application of these words, which is a natural outworking of our holiness, is that we should be proclaiming the gospel in any part of the creation that we find ourselves able to do so. Our testimony to the gospel is one of the main purposes for our lives on earth, and so we ought to use every opportunity we have to explain this gospel to those who aren’t living according to it. It’s true to say that every believer is an “ambassador for Christ”, so we represent Him to alienated, hostile, and evil people who stand in need of His mercy, grace, and peace. So are you proclaiming the gospel to the human creation that God has given you access to?